Daniela Pascual Esparza.
I’m an artist with a background in social sciences and urban governance. I create passages between these fields to question inherited narratives and imagine other ways of being in the world. This can manifest as workshops, performances, curatorial or consultancy work.
My research is site-oriented, and my practice engages with plant life, oracular methods, and modes of inhabiting. I conceive performances as ephemeral viewpoints, enabling several ways of relating to our bodies and surroundings within specific contexts.
Whether working in urbanism or the arts, I try to understand what shapes our imaginaries, how we connect with desire, and how this informs decision-making. More specifically, I’m engaging with the following questions:
What does it mean to see?
What does it mean to be autonomous?
How to work for space?
These questions help me tangibly frame my artistic processes, which I conceive as pedagogical experiences. They are my scaffolding against apathy, the occasion to share my shortcomings with others, to learn with others. Because a performance is not an opinion but an act of creation, it is through these gestures that I intend to re-enchant my presence in the world.
I live in Finland since 2017, where I’ve graduated from the MA in Live Art and Performance Studies programme at the University of the Arts Helsinki.
E-mail: mariadaniela.pascual@gmail.com | CV available here.